If I were to ....

At school, I was good at academics and one of my favorite subjects was "English" (though I never got satisfactory marks in this subject :-( ).

Don't get scared, I am not going to take a session on parts of speech or direct/indirect speech or something like that ;-)

There are two things that I like very much in English - one is the clause "If I were you /If I were to" and the other is the conjunction "but".

Okay, let me tell you why I like these two and I hope you too will start observing your English while you speak ;-)

Let's start with "but" (my all time favorite) - The word reminds me of two things - one is a lesson in English that I studied in my 11th class, titled "Voltaire and Federick, the Great" ..In the story "Voltaire and Federick, the Great", Voltaire represents the suffering in the kingdom ruled by Federick and the way Voltaire puts the problems is what I like the most - He goes on like this - "Federick, you are the most benevolent ruler on this earth but are you aware that people in your country are starving to death ...." Voltaire always had two statements with a but connecting the two - the first part of the statement shovers accolades while the second explains the problems - I think it is a very clever of explaining problems, isn't it ?

The other thing that comes to my mind is my first appraisal document ;-) The document went on like this - "Kiran, you are a good programmer, but there is a lot of scope for you to improve w.r.t quality...blah..blah..blah" ;-) Ever since then, it has become a practice to search for the word but and ignore the first statement (if I feel like I have to improve) and in some cases, ignore the second half of the sentence (if I feel that I am listening to an idiot than me ;-) )

Okay, the next interesting clause is "If I were to/ If I were you .." - I am sure that this is the clause that most of us use quite often - some might say "If I were the PM of this country ..." , while some others might say - "If I were the richest man on this earth" ; some might say - "If I were the president of US..." and some might even say "If I were GOD ... " ;-)

The reason why I like this clause is very simple - It let's you think of anything that you wish and this gives you the start to dream about anything and everything and as one of the day dreamers, I look for such a starter feel to switch to my dreamy world ;-)

Now, the obvious question that I put to myself is how did I use "If I were to" recently ... Well, let me tell you that Feb-2008 has become my favorite month (not because of the Valentine's day) because I am spending time with my engineering pals and having fun as we are meeting after a very long time and in such happiest moments my feeling is "If I were to ask GOD, I would ask him to stop the time and let me enjoy with my friends ;-)"